The blazing heat of a hundred assimilations bore down on Akevorax constantly, but the pain or concern did not show on his face. Thankfully, the Nexus gave the expected response just a few minutes later.

[Bloodline energy has reached an evolutionary threshold. Prepare for evolutionary measures to begin]

However, this wasn’t an evolution he cared about to any length. He just needed the strongest immediate option to push his base power to master tier, that alone increased his options greatly.

As such, Akevorax relegated to thinking about what he wanted from the Nexus. If it wanted to read his mind the powerful system could do so at any time, and through this method that warrior outside couldn’t interfere. He thought to himself, “Nexus, can you select the strongest evolution as soon as you get the results? I don’t care if it’s a final evolution, just as long as it doesn’t use divinity.”

[You know we can’t do that. Our role in the evolutions is purely to find options and list them]

“Please, I know you can do it. Will the other nodes really care if you circumvented that rule when I asked,” Akevorax tried to use a combination of his permission and identity to get around the ruling. Whilst no power in the universe restricted the Nexus from acting in this regard, they preferred to follow their own set of rules… Asking it to break such a rule wasn’t the lightest thing in the world.

[Choosing your evolution would be an extreme abuse of power, our node would be subject to internal investigations and lose some abilities. Sorry, we cannot do that]

Without any other options, he could only sit down and wait for the giant list about to appear. The usual list of filters appeared, but he truly wasn’t sure what possible option from all these bloodlines offered the greatest benefit. If anything, it was likely an upgrade to his current selection which achieved it though.

[Evolution imminent. Your possible bloodline pathways are the following:

Holistic Eternal Ice-cream

Please make a selection in 5 minutes, or a random pathway will be used]

Akevorax’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t let out a complaint or question it. Just thinking for a few seconds as he said with a bitten lip, “So… That’s… I understand. I select Holistic Eternal Ice-cream. The description as well, please.”

[Holistic Eternal Ice-cream: Final evolution of Draconic Mind, Regeneration, and Revival pathways combined. The Mind becomes a holy fantasy for endless life, it ensures prosperity and infinity so long as your existence permeates reality. Your Mind may wilfully permeate anything desired to whatever degree you achieve; higher dimensions become revealed under the fantasy. Resources flow to form paradise, and a utopic future awaits. Talent increased immensely. No bonuses generated for this bloodlines (power exceeds allowance for bonuses)]

While he gulped at the flourishing description, it was the final line which stirred a line out of him, “I didn’t know there were bloodlines so powerful that you couldn’t give bonuses.”

[There aren’t, not until now at least. You draw way too much attention]

Another exception was created especially for him. But just what did this bloodline even do?

He’d heard of final evolutions which combine multiple pathways as well… But these usually appeared from very deeply linked bloodlines. Regeneration and Revival made sense, Draconic Mind did not. But he wasn’t picky, if the Nexus deemed it the best possible bloodline, then he’d happily take it.

The giant draconic body wrapped itself into a ball and evolved in the shaking sub-realm. The floor itself flopped about like an ocean drenched in waves and his egg rolled about chaotically. Such motion did not help with the grievous nausea inflicted.

But it ended with him alive, the warrior outside did not strike in his most weak moment. Not that it mattered at their level. Whether defending or immobile, he wasn’t truly that hard to kill.

And with this evolution he was… Actually not any physically stronger.

His mind though, that’s where all the power concentrated to an incredible degree. It was hard to explain just how ridiculous the evolution was, but Akevorax now understood why so many races considered evolutions a core factor of their power. After all, his evolutions were all a steady but slow rise, and for a while he assumed most beasts were like this. Most books followed this logic. Meanwhile, humans jumped rapidly in power after every evolution but encountered far fewer in their path up.

An overlooked fact was what they evolved though. He never evolved his body, the main source of power for almost everything, and all his evolutions resolved in a lowered improvement because of it.

But this time, he fully utilised the sheer increase offered by a bloodline. On top of merging three powerful pathways.

A shower of silver and golden rays suddenly descended into the unstable realm, the ground and air which squirmed and manoeuvred like a mirage settled down. They returned to a solid floor of earth and a fluid, vapid air. From above appeared the mountain’s image, drenched in this almost heavenly light which stabilised space merely from its presence.

And only now did the eternal’s blank face transform, an incomparably small wrinkle formed as they frowned for a moment.

“Too slow,” Akevorax spoke as the pocket watch activated once more, the 20 fold acceleration allowed him to see a hand reach through the dimension itself, mere inches from his head but easy enough to dodge with a single wingbeat backwards.

A two second acceleration, with half that time used for a single dodge.

Golden runes sprouted on his body too, ones eerily similar to the ones which coated that eternal warrior outside, however, his were not so superficial. They not only coated his scales but seeped through the whole body, diffusing endless divine power to every bit of ice cream and sorbet. As much as he attempted to control the runes beyond his body, the control over divinity devolved so quickly that the runes practically shattered into a fundamental state.

They’d recover, but it temporarily weakened his divinity as a whole.

Akevorax wasn’t just infused with divinity either, as the Auric spirit quickly merged alongside it and formed a deeply layered web.

The last bit of time in acceleration came to an end though, and from the side a heavy metal boot slammed into his side and launched the dragon upwards like a ball. Not even a millisecond later had a second boot appeared above him. The shiny grey metal formed a crescent arc of light as it swung down in an axe kick, his body sent hurtling to the ground with tremendous force.

His body struck the barren landscape and formed a deep crater from impact alone, chunks of dirt and clay sent flying. Yet he stood up from the grievous damage, completely unharmed.

A few cracked scales on his back healed up instantly, and that was the end of a single bout.

“You are annoyingly durable. But that just means I have to use a bit more power,” the eternal warrior finally spoke. And with those words, they appeared in the sub-realm, fully armoured from head to toe. Just the stylistic set of heavy metal, laden with pointed bits to stab into someone if they approached too close, was a set made of cornem tier materials.

However, that didn’t exactly answer if it was a High-rank treasure tool, or truly a Rune tool. The difference being incredible craftsmanship taken to inscribe hundreds upon thousands of great runes onto each piece of that armour. These top-tier tools were incomparably rare. So much so that even Raccelline hadn’t been given one by her father! In comparison, divine relics with power equal to them were simply too easy to create! Manus possessed more than enough divinity to create a few every year!

“Do you think I’m that much of a pushover?!” Akevorax snarled back in response, the golden and silver rays burst out in brilliance and now illuminated the entire sub-realm. It was impossible to see without some sort of special vision, but his transformation did not end there.

A raging snowstorm covered the mountain, yet the argent and auric lights penetrated through the clouds to reflect all throughout the world. The snowstorm no longer contained itself to the small illusion of a mountain, fog condensed as its presence froze the realm to unbearable degrees in an instant, continuing on and on as it approached the very lowest temperature possible.

“Just a bit of a cold chill, how funny.” The response was met from a coat of fire which swept around the armoured warrior, their laugh pretty obvious as his offensive was still cute.

But before they could approach, the cloak of flames extinguished and a rapid freeze seeped into their crystal body. Carried by the light many eternals considered a bane, it pierced through and froze his joints. Everything slowed, and for a moment his hands jittered before a powerful force of mana and psychic power flushed themselves clean.

They called upon fire with multiple means, but nothing worked. It wasn’t until their eyes flashed red with a bloody hue that they understood. “How does a twerp like you have Domination Force?”

No longer was the eternal’s tone so casual, as it became apparent that even their information on Akevorax lacked far too much detail. Before the dragon somehow pulled a circumstantial method out of his ass, they had to act…

From Akevorax’s body separated a ghostly figure entwined about his head. The new dragon head, identical in shape and size, stared deeply into the eternal’s eyes as though the full force of a Cornem rank was not enough to trouble them. It presented a constant, sacrificial gaze which knew the inevitable fate of itself and its owner.

“You should worry more about yourself, surely. It’d be truly bad if an elder arrived before you managed to kill me, and I’ve really wanted to use this guy in battle for a while now,” his True Will didn’t just hang about though, as it dove back into his body and rapidly connected to the web of Origin Force created by the spirit. Together, the three augments all combined into a greater whole, Akevorax’s body now emanated waves of power as shockwaves.

All the while, that eternal acted immediately, no longer happy to watch and wait.

This time they drew out a large glaive of about 2 metres. Its curved blade ended with a few staggered waves forming a serrated edge, and its black wood shaft warped the space around it like a star’s gravitational lensing. Akevorax felt sure that a single slash of that blade would cut right through him like a soft slab of jelly. He kinda wished his claws had been replaced, but that time passed a while ago.

His power felt no lesser than the fight against Lostradus, but with endlessly more control and finesse as the section of divinity within him completely submitted.

Like a flash of light, his tail snapped forth as the brown chocolate tip exploded into a shower of fragments. At that point sat the frightening glaive’s blade, slow enough that he reacted and stopped it, but so powerful that merely blocking the strike blew off his tail's tip.

It regrew over the next second… But in that time came three more attacks.

He rocketed upwards from a single wingbeat, something Akevorax missed from the battle against Lostradus, and tilted his wings to rapidly spin off to the side, a glancing lance stabbed into his body but missed his heart completely. A second wingbeat managed to launch him forward, to which his ruby red eyes lit up and created a flat barrier to the side, blocking a crescent arc of darkness as another stab came from the other direction.

This whole time he hadn’t even caught sight of the eternal who moved in the shadows and weaved through the dimensional walls like a fish in water, but the attacks and residues lit up in the dying surroundings so well that he reacted with ease.

His released Mind palace revealed all information so long as its light shone on it. With full knowledge of the battlefield, he reacted to each attack, but just barely.

The ruby plane shattered to fine powder, unable to reflect the objectively stronger move. And sure, his tail end regenerated… But so what?

He endured a single second and a barely serious sequence of attacks with so much effort. To the warrior, this was like his orb zipping about for a few attacks, meaningless and easy to repeat. In response, he did exactly as expected, pulled out the orb to then block several more strikes. The repeated clangs of metal filled the sub-realm as he deflected blow after blow, the attacks speeding up with every hit.

They came from all directions chaotically, as though space wasn’t even a consideration to the eternal. Below and above were the same distance apart, so they could easily attack from both directions instantaneously. A stab and a slice executed in fractions of a second so short that reasonable measurement no longer existed.

The wingbeat of a hummingbird couldn’t even compare.

And no one forgot the repeatedly thrown out skills or ranged attacks sent by this unnamed warrior. Second after second, Akevorax could only throw his body about like a toy or frantically push about the orb as a defence, his liquid silver armour completely incomparable to such a ridiculous foe.

For god’s sake, they hadn’t even used a single move becoming of a Cornem rank! All this fight, they purposely held back their mana just to stop anything from detecting a release of power at that level!

The warrior didn’t care if the fight took three minutes instead of three seconds, so long as they succeeded and hid their presence.

At the five second mark, Akevorax couldn’t take the pressure though, and forcibly activated a doubled acceleration period for the next minute. At the same time, finally able to react against attacks and move towards his array. With just one charge left, he didn’t expect it to work well against this opponent, but anything helped. Obviously, how could someone of this level not immediately see what he intended to do though?

With a single strike, their glaive came down and shattered the array’s Base component. Hundreds of junctions and transfer lines crumbled as the metal which formed them shattered into tiny fragments.

And after that single attack, they returned straight to attacking.

It was a brutal, unstoppable, and entirely unending offensive. His power, currently equal to his battle against Lostradus, wasn’t even enough to make this Cornem rank take him seriously.

And while that might not be possible… There was a way to stall them long enough that he got to see those Divinus runes a bit better. Asharvad wasn’t a no name god by any means, but were they so competent in this manner of stealth to evade Manus’ watchful gaze?

Not a chance in hell. So now he needed to find out.

Who exactly supported the eternals all of a sudden?